Nora Lustig,
Samuel Z. Stone Professor of Economics, has been awarded a grant
from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study the impact of fiscal
policy on inequality and poverty in low-income countries.

Nora Lustig

Lustig is founder and director of the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) project,
which is designed to analyze the impact of taxes and social spending on inequality
and poverty, and to provide a roadmap for governments, multilateral institutions,
and nongovernmental organizations in their efforts to build more equitable
societies (www.commitmenttoequity.org). To date, the project has analyzed and
compared the incidence of taxation and social spending in twelve Latin American
countries, and studies are currently under way in three additional Latin American
countries and six countries in other regions of the world.

The grant, which totals $581,162, will enable Lustig and her team to implement
the analysis in two pilot countries in Africa, Ghana and Tanzania, as well
as to adapt the CEQ methodology to encompass the idiosyncrasies of low-income
countries. She will work alongside co-principal investigators James Alm, Chair
of the Economics Department, and Sean Higgins, Economics Ph.D. student.

By undertaking a thorough and transparent analysis of who bears the burden
of taxation and who receives the benefits of public spending, the project ultimately
hopes to foster evidence-based policy discussion and, ideally, implementation
of reforms related to taxation, public spending, and social programs in the
two countries.